Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Independent, Thrillers, Casting, Deals, Family Films, War

Here are some casting bites for the fresh New Year, courtesy of Variety:

• Just over a handful of years since he played the crucial role of the “Terrified Sailor” in Pearl Harbor, and a few less since he was “Bob in 70’s Sex-Ed Film” in The Girl Next Door, Nicholas Downs has nabbed a lead role in an upcoming drama called Prep School. This is a follow-up to Downs’ and filmmaker Jerome E. Scott’s last film, Anderson’s Cross. According to Times Colonist, Scott described it as a film like “Dead Poet’s Society meets Primal Fear.” That’s an interesting combination.. Anyway, the paper went on to say that the film follows a smart prep student who befriends the school’s outcast, gets in trouble with a dean who has a dark secret, and struggles with the pressures of privilege and conformity.
• Colleen Crabtree, on the other hand, has a much goofier cinematic score. It appears that she just co-starred in the recently-wrapped Opposite Day, which stars none other than ol’ comedic names like Pauly Shore and French Stewart. It’s a family film, but there’s no word on what it’s about yet. However, considering the mass amount of children on IMDb’s cast list, could it be some sort of school comedy with an opposite theme? Who knows! We should find out some time later this year.
• Michelle Stafford, who has spent the last seven years playing Phyllis Summers Abbott on The Young and the Restless, has grabbed the lead in a new indie project called 3 Days Gone. She’ll play a detective in a rather interesting little thriller. The IMDb plot outline says: “Lucas Snow was buried alive and has lost 3 days of his life. His best friend is murdered and the two top crime bosses are hunting him down as well as the police. Will he find out who set him up?” The film will hit theaters this May.
• Finally, T.J. Thyne, otherwise known as Dr. Jack Hodgins from Bones, has nabbed himself roles in two new films. First there is Jada Pinkett Smith’s The Human Contract, which Erik first blogged about here, and secondly, there’s The Last Full Measure, which stars Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman. The latter is about a bureaucrat who has to decide whether a fallen hero should be given the nation’s highest award after 40 years. As if Bruce and Morgan weren’t enough to challenge Thyne, there’s also John Cusack, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, and Andy Garcia.

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Filed under: Drama, Casting, Steven Spielberg

With all the interesting projects Steven Spielberg had lined up to choose from after completing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the news that he’d direct a movie about the Chicago 7 has come out of left field — though we did hear a bit about it back in July. But as of yet, the guy hasn’t denied the news that Sacha Baron Cohen will be playing Abbie Hoffman in a film titled The Trial of the Chicago Seven scripted by Aaron Sorkin (Charlie Wilson’s War). Nor has Spielberg publicly commented on some other casting possibilities leaked in the new Vanity Fair article about Indiana Jones — possibilities I apparently missed the first time around, because those photos were so eye-grabbing. One definite casting decision, according to that article, is Philip Seymour Hoffman as William Kunstler, the famous attorney who defended the 7 as they were tried on charges of conspiring to incite riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

The Vanity Fair writer, Jim Windolf, wrote about learning of this news while visiting Spielberg at his Amblin Entertainment office on the Universal lot. The writer claims to have glanced at a table on which headshots of Will Smith, Taye Diggs, Adam Arkin and Kevin Spacey were visibly linked to the Chicago Seven project. None of the actors’ proposed roles were determined, however. Now, I don’t want to assume that Spielberg planted those headshots for Windolf to see, but it does seem strange that such a sometime-secretive filmmaker would let something like this be leaked in such a way. It also seems strange to think that anybody, even Spielberg, would need a headshot of Smith in order to decide to cast him as Black Panther (and 8th of the originally Chicago Bobby Seale, who I will assume Smith’s being considered to play. Windolf also claims that Sorkin’s script is somehow based on the documentary Chicago 10, which premiered at Sundance last year and is being given a limited release next month. As Jessica noted the other day, you could probably make that a must-see primer while you await Spielberg’s film (and more news about it). Another idea is to check out Steal this Movie (often available for free online), which is also good to watch for the appearance of a very young Michael Cera as Abbie Hoffman’s son, America.

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Filed under: Casting, RumorMonger, Fandom, DIY/Filmmaking

Now here’s an interesting on-screen duo. Bloody-Disgusting reports that Philip Seymour Hoffman and Viggo Mortensen are in talks to join the cast of Vanikoro, which is based on a true story, was written and will be directed by Hitman helmer Xavier Gens. Vanikoro (which is not to be confused with Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie — what’s up with all the ‘V’ titles?) tells of the real-life French explorer La Perouse who, in 1788, found himself in the middle of a shipwreck on the island of Vanikoro. Apparently there were two ships that got wrecked, and the survivors of the second ship found a way to salvage enough parts to re-build a smaller ship and sail away. However, two survivors remained on the island into the early 1800s. Those two survivors, we’re guessing, would be played by Mortensen and Hoffman. Then again, neither is French … so who knows?

Gens, who I feel received a bad rap after Hitman debuted to a very lackluster response back in November, spoke about Vanikoro to BD at the Toronto Fest (where he premiered the much buzzed-about horror flick Frontier(s)) and — get this — said Vanikoro was like Peter Jackson’s King Kong meets Cannibal Holocaust. Throw in Mortensen and Hoffman, and that’s a movie I want to see. Gens was also recently rumored to be among those being considered to direct a new updated Conan film, though I imagine fans would rather him stick to stuff he wrote; stuff he controls. It shall be fascinating to watch how all this pans out.

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Filed under: Action, Casting, Deals, Sony, Fandom, James Bond, Remakes and Sequels, Daniel Craig

Variety is reporting that Jeffrey Wright will reprise his role as CIA operative Felix Leiter in Bond 22, after first putting his stamp on the popular supporting character in Casino Royale. I say ‘popular’ only in the sense that Leiter has been recreated innumerable times in the Bond films and novels — if you go to the Wikipedia page for the character you’ll see an entire picture set of different actors, of different ages, builds and races, who have portrayed him through the years. I personally find it stupid and distracting to keep shoving some new, completely different character in our faces every few years and have him simply be referred to by the same name as the last guy. And yeah, I know, you could say the same thing about James Bond himself, but that’s sort of a necessity. Just because Bond must be played by a new actor every once in a while doesn’t mean that his supporting cadre of sidekicks are owed the same kind of longevity.

In other Bond news, the Vanity Fair spread on Indiana Jones — specifically the Q&A with Spielberg — contains some interesting musings by The Beard on what separates Bond from Jones and vice versa. I especially liked the interviewer’s noting that Alison Doody’s character in the third Indy was a lot more in the mold of a traditional Bond girl than a Jones woman. Spielberg agreed, noting that “She was more like a Bond girl, but she was also a betrayer. She betrays Indy, but she’s more like a Bond girl. But not Kate. Kate wasn’t a Bond girl at all. When push came to shove, she could stand alongside Indy and knock out thuggies.” He actually said thuggees! Too bad VF spelled it wrong.

UPDATE: Variety has also just confirmed that Mathieu Amalric has been cast as the Bond 22 villain (as previously rumored), meanwhile Variety also claims producers and the studios are on the verge of casting a female lead with an announcement coming within the next two weeks.

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[CES 2008] The HP Pavilion TX2000 is a 12.1” Tablet PC that is designed to have everything that a student needs… to study and to keep in touch with the family. The tablet format can come in handy, if one wants to do a quick drawing or even take notes (I must be old, because I prefer to type…). The integrated webcam could either be used to chat with the family or be YouTube next celebrity, for better or worse. This curvy little computer costs $1299.

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[CES 2008] I remember the days where you had to drop $2500 to get a good Media Center PC. These days for $1160, you can get something like the m9150f: a high-end CPU, plenty of storage and a high-definition optical disc.

Just like for the AMD-based m8330f, the choice of using 3GB is a good one and the only thing that I would ask is: “why didn’t you integrate the Blue-Ray/HD-DVD combo drive found in the HP Slimline s3330f?”. Cost or volume (or both) might be the answer, but there’s also a regular DVD drive in there!

The m9150f is a pretty cool Media Center that makes me wonder if it’s worth the hassle to build a new one myself. The answer is “no”… if the m9150f is silent enough.

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[CES 2008] AMD’s Phenom is getting some love from HP with this m8330f Media Center PC. Obviously, it has a NTSC/ATSC TV Tuner, 3GB of RAM, 640GB (2×320) of storage and a video-friendly GeForce 8500 GT graphics card. However, it lacks the High Definition disc player. I guess that it is the price to pay to be below $1000, which might be surprising for a Quad-Core PC.

The 3GB of RAM are a judicious choice, because that is pretty much what Vista 32 can use. Other manufacturers will be releasing 4GB computers with 32-bit operating system, but we think that Vista 32 isn’t very good at dealing that amount, turning the last GB into somewhat wasted money that could be used to buy a HD optical disc…

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It is easy to see that the HP s3330f is small – only one-third of the size of the average desktop PC. The second interesting feature is the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD combo drive – yes the very thing that makes the HD-war irrelevant has been integrated by HP in a sub-$1000 PC. For this price, you get a decent configuration in terms of memory (2GB), and storage (500GB) and a graphics card with full H.264 decode – a good fit for the combo drive, obviously. The s3330f also has a NTSC/ATSC tuner for TV recording. If you don’t plan to add full-size (graphics?) cards in your computer, it’s worth looking for. If you do, you might want to make sure that it fits.

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